The son of working-class Jewish parents, Edward J. Blum made his career as a financial adviser and experienced the kind of upward mobility that American institutions were supposed to foster for talented children of modest means. He has spent the past 30 years lobbying against what he calls “racial gerrymandering.” His first huge, if partial, success came in the Supreme Court ruling Shelby County v. Holder (2013), which limited the ways in which the federal government could require states to do this “sordid thing, this divvying us up by race,” as Chief Justice John Roberts once called it. Blum then took the fight to the Ivy League in October 2022 as the head of Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), whose work culminated earlier this year in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.
Q: What line in the ruling most pleased you or presented the best opportunity for positive application?
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